It is wholly untrue that republicans are difficult to buy Christmas presents for. And yes, there was the incident where your significant other thought it would be funny to buy you Boris Johnson’s 2007 ‘The Dream of Rome’ or Philip Ryan and Niall O’Connor’s 2018 Leo Varadkar biography. That was definitely a Christmas present fail. Free article

“It was Erskine’s sniff that got him shot.” So remarked one who “knew and loved him well”. And perhaps there is truth in such a devastating verdict. For Erskine Childers was often an outsider, even among friends. Free article

This article first appeared in An Phoblacht in December 1932, ten years after the execution of Liam Mellows. Nora Connolly O’Brien, daughter of James Connolly and a revolutionary in her own right, was a close friend of Liam Mellows. She died in 1981 after a life of activism, including supporting the protesting Republican prisoners in the H-Blocks and Armagh Prison up to the time of her last illness. Free article

In ‘The Gates Flew Open’, Peadar O’Donnell’s inspirational memoir of his days as a Republican prisoner during the Civil War, Liam Mellows is described as “the richest mind our race had achieved for many a long day”. Others testified to the magnetism of his personality and his ability to motivate and to organise, as well as his deep thinking and profound commitment to the cause of the Irish Republic. Free article